This is likely the most inane item on my bucket list, so of course it’s where I’m starting as I get my groove back. Keeping a plant alive is like making sure a river still runs; if you leave it alone, it gets the job done on its own… not much for me to do.

I grew up among flowers. My grandparents have kept a sprawling garden my entire life. As I grow older, the garden remains wild and colorful and magical the way everything was magical when I was six and drunk on imagination. In the summer their kitchen brimmed with dahlias: every container became a vase, from ginger ale bottles to cat food cans. Adventuring fingers could find raspberries, crab apples, blackberries, and feral strawberries in the garden. Raccoons, birds, cats, mice, rats, and deer call the garden home to this day. I grew up telling myself stories in that garden. I will get married in that garden. My children will find secrets of their own in that garden.

Several years back my father fulfilled his lifelong dream of starting a plant nursey of his own in Washington.

My brother used to shop for lily bulbs in catalogs the way other boys shopped for video games.

My supposed pedigree extends further: my father’s mother is also an exceptionally talented gardener. Her apartment gives homes to flowers big and small, beautiful rescues she can care for. She recently told me she has five gardens at her senior residence… “plus the others outside the fenced garden plots – oh – and a dozen or so tomato plants on the fourth floor.”

They’re all addicted. Who are these people, and where do they get it from? I love flowers, and I love plants. But I tend to Lenny any plant I try to care for. My limited plant resume includes obituaries for a small cactus, a tiny pot of ivy, and these, which were once daffodils:

Despite the small tragedy pictured above, I’m optimistic. I will keep a plant alive. For how long? I didn’t specify. This bucket list is 100% subjective, and I make my own rules. So this item will be ongoing, but to start….seeds.

Where to get those…